Solid state switch I changed into machanic button and instead of 555 timer I used 2 transistors. It's cheaper in this way. And another reason is that it is realy hard to get such things like ic's in my town so I designed something different...

I have nothing aginst these pjezoelectric ignitors, excep their lifetime. They will die ater few thousand ignitions... My aim is to make simple, cheap, powerful and compact ignitor which will last forever. And i mean MAKE not buy. I want something which I could make from scrap materials or buy components in ANY shop for minimal price...

I mounted everything in air, just using few wires and made smaller HV transformer. I also improoved my circuit by changing few values and adding one extra cap (C4) so now the circuit works from 3v so you can use two AA bateries in series to feed it.It ain't as small as I wanted, but it can run from a small 3,7V battery, gives hot white sparks and is quite enough for a spud gun. And I think it is quite smal to fit in spud gun's handlegip... I also had ideas to make everything using SMD's but it won't be so cheap then...As I got sick and am short of free time because of my studies I won't make tutorial how to make such ignitor, but there are nothing too complex about it so here are few links:HV transformer winding tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kk9_Nen ... re=feedlikFirst transformer can be an audio transformer...If you have both transformers just get few electronic parts and conect everything like shown in the schematic.If anybody has any more questions e-mail me: 6stygos.ricardas@gmail.com